What is wrong with us, as a nation, as individuals, as a society? Everything I think. Yesterday’s brutal gang rape in Mumbai has such a sad and pathetic sense of deja vu! Nine months or so ago a ‘nation’ was ‘enraged’ at another brutal rape, the Delhi one. And excuse my cynicism but nine months hence the ‘nation’ will again be enraged against another brutal rape in another city. If we as a ‘nation’ a really enraged at brutal rapes, then we should be in a state of perpetual rape as every day women, girls and even babies get raped somewhere in this vast land of ours. But that is not so. I guess we only get enraged when the victim resembles us. A physiotherapist, a photo journalist. Someone we are in sync with. Our ‘rage’ is short lived. Some of us take to the streets, others consigned it to words – me -, yet others go a step further and ask for new laws, new training programmes. The powers that be make empty promises that are never kept but no one is there to ask them why. For instance CCTV were promised, they are yet to be sourced. Fast track courts were set but who defines fast! An old repugnant self professed God man assaults a minor but he will never be caught.

We will write, make some noise and then go back into the safe little boxes we live in. As long as it is not my child, my daughter, my friend we are not willing to see what is happening around us to children, to women to co citizens. Our rulers get away with impunity. They can loot, rape, abuse, threaten and murder, they not only get away but we vote them back to power!

I forgot these rapes make good material for heated debates where we hear the ‘country wants to know’. Which country and above all why do they want to know if they are not going to leave the comfort of their box and dirty their hands.

After 66 years of Independence we are still trying to address and legislate food laws. I would feel embarrassed if I were in a position of power. That 5000 children die every day of malnutrition should be enough to make a whole government resign in shame. But no they are busy debating a law that will give a few kilo of cereals to the ‘poor’.

Schemes to help the door have been voted time and again and never properly implemented. Implement them for God’s sake. Do we really need new ones?

And let us talk of education. It has taken our legislators decades to address the situation. After 66 years we cannot even provide a bench to every school going child in the capital even by running 2 shifts. Can’t our leaders and politicians see this. No they are busy fighting on petty issues. Parliament does not function though its costs lakhs for it run every minute. Grains rot because you cannot store it. Quacks kill as we do not have a proper health programme for the poor.

What do we look like to others. I do not even want to think of it. Let me just share one image that I see regularly these days as I take my husband for treatment to one of the super speciality hospital. Just in front of the super speciality hospital that charges the earth and the moon to treat you is a huge open garbage dump that stinks. If I were administrating that hospital that mints money, I would have done something. But that is who we are: a nation that would keep its home clean and dump the filth in front. We have no civic sense. We are aware of our rights but forget our duties. We have erected walls between the haves and have nots and forget that the two are inter dependent.

We want to show case ourselves as a young nation with immense potential youth power and true in a couple of years we will have 760 million young people, but as was said in a recent article unless we provide this youth bulge with education, employment, health, safety and liberty, we will soon have 706 million extremely pissed-off, marginalised, restless young people on our hands. But unless we get off our back sides, forget petty politics to take brownie points and give these 760 million a good educations and sufficient employment, the frustration of these young souls will translate into crime of all kinds. And when those happen, we will again step out of our homes to join some vigils or the other and get our conversation subject for our next kitty party or page 3 do or a chance to appear on a TV show debate where India wants to know! But 760 million is a tinder box waiting to explode. It is time we did something.

Can’t read, Can’t write, Can’t count. The Empty promise of Primary Education in India is the topic selected by a leading weekly to mark the 66th Independence Day of India. Haven’t read all of it yet as I want to do so slowly and with responsibility but I am grateful to this weekly with a conscience to have chosen this not so TRP worthy subject to mark an important day! After 66 years we as nation have not understood that is education and EDUCATION alone that can change India. Just ask yourself what makes the real difference between you and the woman who cleans your house. The answer is simple: your ability to read and write and speak good English and count of course!  Your savoir faire, your manners, your behaviour are all bye products of your education. The first article poses the question that begs to be asked: in spite of ‘adequate’ funding, statistics are frightening. The Education imparted is state run schools is so bad that five years from now over half the children in rural India will be in private schools. Enrolling children is not enough it is what and how they are taught that matters. It is time posits the article to stop patting ourselves on the back for statistics that mean nothing, and admit that there are systemic failures that need to be addressed with honesty.

I remember telling a bunch of Lohar (gypsy blacksmith) kids  that they had to dream big, and if they did they would be able to fulfil their dream. In those days we taught them on an empty piece of land behind their roadside camp and amongst the kids was Sanjay (wearing a yellow shirt in the pic). I do not know what his dream was that day but let me tell you he made it big. After a stint as a project why teacher he found his wings (with a little help) and now walks the ramp for high fashion designers in India and Paris. What he got from us is education of course, but also the chance to meet people from other countries, to gain confidence, speak English and dream! This memory came back to me when I read a line of the article.  What do we tell a child who dreams of being a pilot and knows that school is the only way to achieve that dream but hates school because she is violently punished whenever she makes a mistake by her overworked, overstressed teacher? The answer is simply I do not know! And the author goes on to say, and I second him fully:  We are creating generations of children aching with aspiration but left unequipped by their schooling to realise that aspiration. Imagine the frustration. There is a time bomb ticking and God help us when it explodes! It is time we all woke up to the reality and did something. maybe the first thing would be to read the articles in this issue.

For the past 13 years we have been working in the field, trying to reach out to as many children as possible and ensuring that their years in school are not wasted. Let me tell you you do not need large amounts of money or super skills or even infrastructure to make a difference. In the past 13 years we have taught in a pig park, in a reclaimed garbage dump (we still do), between two houses as you can see in the picture and in every space possible. Our teachers do not have teaching degrees. Some are even drop outs not because they lacked capacity but often because of early marriages. Some of our teachers are pwhy alumni. What they lack in certificates they make up in large measure in motivation, understanding and passion for their work. All that needs to be said is that in the past 12 years no child has failed any examination and many pwhy children top their respective classes. What is sad is that my own peers do not reach out and help us with the funds we so need to carry on and if possible widen our outreach.

Let us be real. Children cannot wait for things to fall in place and be perfect. Children are growing by the minute and for them time is of the essence. The magazine is replete with articles about people doing a great job, but that is not the answer. I too could claim doing a great job but is a drop in the ocean. The response of the powers that me is wishy washy as usual. You can judge for yourself. You can also judge for yourself how behind our children are:  50 percent of kids between the age of 6 and 14 in government schools couldn’t read, write or do arithmetic at any reasonable level. Frightening isn’t it? One of the solutions proposed is to define small concrete goals and meet them. Others feel it is important to use the money sensibly and according to the needs. I laughed and cried at the same time when I read these lines: My favourite is a school without a building that was asked to buy fire safety equipment with grant money. But, of course, there was no building, so they bought the equipment and asked the shopkeeper to keep it until such time they were able to erect one. I am particularly in sync with this view as I have always asked my donors to trust me and leave it to us to decide how the money is best spent.

All the above sounds logical, but absurd when we realise that we are debating this after 66 years of Independence. The magazine has a series of articles on what philanthropists are doing, or what individuals are organisations are doing. Every one is worth a read. But the problem is huge and such voices and deeds are drops in the ocean. There are also articles highlighting the problems faced by one and all: children, parents and teachers. Each one of them are valid and show that our whole education system needs to be re-looked at.

There are some issues that I have often highlighted and that I would like to reiterate. One is that we must stop the farce of retaining 33% as a pass percentage for any examination. This sets the course of mediocrity and shuts many doors for children who would have spend or should I say wasted 12 years in school. The next one is to change the approach the State seems to have taken. Instead of privatising education and ‘reserving’ some seats for ‘poor’ child, seats often hijacked by the middle class as the poor do not have the knowledge and often documents required to secure a place for their children, the State should take on its constitutional responsibility and make every state run school a centre for excellence so that it attracts a mix of social profiles. And last but not the least, we should not only accept but encourage that our driver’s kid shares a bench with ours!

I almost did not go! The sky was laden with dark grey clouds threatening to rain and if I were to catch a sniffle it would spell disaster as Ranjan’s immune system is close to nought with the darned chemo. But then even though large drops started falling I decided to take a chance. It had been too long since I had seen my kids at the women centre and as they were celebrating Independence day with their usual fervour. I thought it would be a nice outing for my grandson too. So off we went and the rain Gods were on our side. They had played spoil sport earlier and that had compelled the women centre team to reorganise the sitting arrangement and the stage had to be in the open so that all kids could be seated under the tin roof.

The show was lovely. The flag hoisting, the National Anthem sung loud and with great zeal even if some were faster than the others, and some out of key. That is what made it that much more touching to me. It was not a well rehearsed performance but an anthem sung from the heart. Then the children presented a show with dances and songs and speeches. I was impressed by the quality of the performance. Some of the solo dances were I was told self taught, courtesy TV reality shows, and quite impressive. A robot dance was particularly well executed and loved by my grandson who delighted us all evening with his version it.

As I watched these little and not so little faces, I saw so much hope in the eyes of every child that my blood ran cold. I had just finished writing a blog on Independence day and what it meant to me and my parents and how disillusioned those who fought and lay down their lives for this day would be if they saw India as she is today. It was easy to rant and rave and write words that would remain just that: words – that may or not be read – soon to be forgotten. Looking at these children, all three hundred and more of them, I realised that they had set their hopes in what we could give them and do for them and thus the responsibility that someone – let us call him/her god with a small g – had given us was far larger than what we could imagine. It was OK to rant and rave about things that were not as they should be, but we had been ‘chosen’ to right a wrong for children born half a century after India became independent and still stuck in a rut of promised not fulfilled, deprived of all the rights that were theirs just because they were born in this land.

So though I am going through a bad patch, I cannot and will not give up the pledge I made to myself many moons ago. I have to make that little difference so that the hope in the little eyes I saw becomes the reality these kids deserve. A reality that became theirs on August 15th 1947 but never reached them.

August 15th is Independence Day. It is also my Pa’s birthday. It is also the day my Mama was freed from the pledge she had taken of not getting married before India became independent. All said and done it was probably the day I became a possibility. My parents were insanely and passionately in love with India. My father gave up his Mauritian (British nationality) and elected to come back and serve his motherland. My mama’s sacrifices and harsh childhood, the nights when the hunger pangs were so severe that sleep would not come, but these were accepted with dignity as the sole bread earner spent more nights in jail than at home; the welts of the backs of her father and his freedom fighter friends that were tended by a young child, all that was forgotten as the Indian flag was hoisted on the ramparts of the red fort. To our little family August 15th was indeed a very blessed that, as it was the very foundation of my small but wonderful family.

Being an Ambassador’s child meant that the tricolour flew every day on our house; it also flew on papa’s car when he was in it. Independence Day and Republic Day were celebrated with a formal flag hoisting. As I grew from childhood to my teens, I learnt about the solemnity of these days and also about the price people like my grandfather had to pay to make India a free nation.

After Papa retired, we became simple citizens of a country I had been made to love. I was, and still am, proud to be Indian. How can I forget the dying words of my father: do not lose faith in India. I guess he needed to give me this legacy as he died a few days before the destruction of the Babri Masjid, when religious extremism was at its worse. The destruction of the Masjid would have broken his heart.

What picture can I paint of my country today that would be worth dying for. The only ray of hope I saw for a fleeting moment was is in the eyes of the children of project why who sang the national anthem and hoisted the flag this morning. I shudder to think when they too will lose faith in this land that does not care for them or for any one. After 66 years of Independence what have do we have to be proud of? Three children dying every minute of malnutrition? Children who have sat religiously on a school benches (or on the floor as we have still not been able to provide a school bench to every school going child even in the capital) and can barely read or write after years? Midday meals that are not fit for consumption but are forced out the throats of kids even if they die (I was told this morning after the I Day celebration at the women centre that teachers told the children to remove the worms from the slush they were served and eat it)? Children who work not only in eateries or mechanic shops but also in educated homes as servants in spite of laws against child labour? Statistics that should make any self respecting human being hang his/her head in shame but leaves us immobile and unconcerned.

How can I explain to those who laid down their lives and suffered humiliation to fight for freedom that in the past 66 years what we have excelled at is dividing the country in every which way possible. That those who were given the sacred task of building a Nation have destroyed it again again. Caste, religion, gender, language and how can I forget riches have all been instruments to create deeper and deeper schisms in our society. Where some live in mansions others live in holes. This again happens in our capital city. Some throw away food with impunity, others follow field rats to their burrows and are skilled in scrapping out the grains stolen and stored underground by the rodents to calm the hunger of their children. This after 66 years of Independence. And what makes it worse is that every year grains rot as we have not been able to come up with a sound way of keeping surplus grain safe.

Over the years the ones meant to rule us have failed us time and again. Over the years laws meant to deal with all that is stated above have been promulgated to gain votes and then never or poorly implemented. They are simply means to ‘look good’ at election times and carefully perused to see how they can become new ways of filling pockets. Yes we have mastered the art of corruption better than anyone else.  It has become a way of life for everyone from the humblest to the highest and mightiest. In a land where ingenuity and resourcefulness is our biggest asset, the poor that we have let down so badly and in all manner possible, find ways to survive: a tea shop on the street; a cart selling hot food; a tailor or shoemaker around the corner, the sky is the limit but to be able to earn they have to pay blood money. Would you call this corruption. I call it survival.

How would my mother feel, the one who was amongst the millions of free Indians to set the flag being hoisted on August 15th 1947 if I told her that two politicians in a town not far from where she lived, were caught on camera clinging to a flag pole as they push and heckle each other trying to claim the honour of hoisting the Indian Tricolour on Independence Day. I guess her heart would have simply shattered and all her life’s sacrifices brought to nought. My parents belonged to the generation who stood up when the National Anthem was played on the radio or at the end of the TV broadcast. We did it too, albeit grudgingly and perhaps because we had never felt the blows of the lathis of the British.

Mama who was so anti British did however accept to work for the colonisers as there was one cause that was dearer to her: equality and dignity for women. The feisty and diminutive woman who must have been in her late twenties accepted a job that entailed going to remote villages and ensuring that war widows (IInd World War) got their pensions and that these were not usurped by greedy male relatives. She also spent time with the women of the villages she visited and talked to them about hygiene, nutrition and above all their rights. Believe or not but she drove a 1 ton truck ad was accompanied by a peon.

How do I tell this woman that all her dreams of liberated and educated women in a free India have been usurped. That women and girls today are not respected and esteemed. That 2 month old babies are raped. That rapists get away as all the onus of the rape is shifted by a male led society on the victim: her dress, her habits, her whatever. That we as a society remain numbed and voiceless. That may be things were better off when she trudged from village to village to make a difference.

To a woman who fought to be the first girl in her town to go to school and went on to get a Doctorate, what do I tell about the education we are giving our children today. How do I tell her about classes were 100 children are cramped and teachers disinterested. How do I tell her about the fact that higher education has now become a privilege of the rich as poor children never get enough marks to enter the portals of state run universities and that their parents cannot afford private institutions. How do I tell her that our rulers have privatised and commercialised the only vehicle that could change the destiny of children born on the wrong side of the fence.

The India my parents love with such passion and fervour has lost its way. After 66 years of Independence India is still enslaved to the greed and rapacity of those who rule us and to the indifference of those who can raise their voices.

Happy Independence day!